Its situation, however, does not approach what I had anticipated to
find. From its association with Lo Bengula, the dread Matabele despot
on whose single word hung life and death, I had expected to find
Bulawayo situate on a commanding eminence, looking down on broad
lowlands and far-reaching views that fed the despot's pride of power;
instead of which we found it squatted low on a reddish plain, the ridges
of its houses scarcely higher than the thorn bush that surrounds it.
There are no hills or eminences anywhere in view, whence a large
prospect could be obtained. In fact, the greater part of South Africa
appears different to what I had imagined. Probably the partiality of
all South African writers for Dutch terms had contributed to give me
erroneous impressions. When I read Fenimore Cooper and Mayne Reid's
descriptions of the West, I fancied I knew what a prairie or plain was,
and when, years afterwards, I came in view of them my impressions were
only confirmed. But high, low, and bush _veld_, and _Karroo_, etc.,
have been always indefinite terms to me, and so I came to conceive
aspects of land which were different to the reality. For a thousand
miles we have been travelling over very level or slightly undulating
plains, bush-covered over large spaces, the rest being genuine grassy
prairie. After a thousand mites, or nearly three days by rail, over a
flat country of this description, one naturally thinks that the
objective point of such a journey must be of a different character.
Most of the guests were on the _qui vive_ for a pleasing change of
scenery until we were within five minutes of Bulawayo station. All at
once we caught sight of a few gleams of zinc roofs through the low thorn
bush, and a single iron smoke-stack. When we came out of the bush,
Bulawayo was spread out before us, squatted on what is undeniably a
plain. This plain continues to be of the same character of levelness as
far as Salisbury, ay, even as far as the northern edge of Mashonaland;
it spreads out to Fort Victoria equally level; and as the land declines
to N'gami and the Victoria Falls, it still retains the appearance of
plains. Now, the wonder to me is, not that I am 1360 miles north of
Cape Town, but that the railway limit should be fixed at Bulawayo, a
mere bit of undistinguishable acreage in a flat area which extends to
over half a million square miles. Why this place more than any other?
There is no river near it, there is no topographic feature to
distinguish it. Why not have continued this trunk line on to Salisbury,
on to Tete, and the Zambesi? Why not have continued it on to the
Victoria Falls?